The Right Stuff – Part 2

Successful small and home-based business owners know their own strengths and weaknesses. They build their businesses around their strengths and they compensate for their weaknesses. If you’re to succeed, you’ll have to be able to identify what you do well and what you don’t do so well.

As you evaluate yourself, be honest. You’ll only hurt yourself if you’re not. Also, don’t panic if you discover that you have weaknesses. Every person has them, business owner or not. The key to success is not so much in having every skill (although that would help) as it is in finding ways to compensate for the weaknesses.

You’re in effect making a list of what you like to do and what you don’t like to do. Generally, we like doing things we’re good at and we don’t like doing things we’re not good at. It’s a simple approach, but it should help you start to focus.

The Strengths and Weaknesses Checklist will help you identify your strengths and weaknesses by asking you to rate yourself in several areas that are important to small or home-based business ownership. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses is important because:

It can give you an indication of whether you’re ready to start a small business,

It can help you match your skills to the right opportunity when you are choosing a new business, and

It can tell you whether you need to consider bringing in additional resources to help add skills to the business that you lack (like a team of professionals in the Pro Plan or simply a partner whose skill set complements your own).

Included are the following:

A chart listing the skills that are the most essential to starting and running a new business a rating system for determining your strengths and weaknesses.

A scale for interpreting your answers, such as “you’re ready to start a new business now” to “you should reconsider whether owning a business is right for you.”

Take a few minutes right now to begin to build that checklist. Step back through this article and take a few minutes to think through creating your list of strengths and weaknesses. Then, come back tomorrow and we’ll move a little deeper into “The Right Stuff”.